Spell: Honey Cage

Another spell that comes from generating names straight out of Knave 2e. I really struggle to write spells, easily the place where I have the hardest time. So no better way to get practice with it than actually do it. I wanna thank Nick over at Breaker Press Games for this idea. It really has gotten me to leap into the creation of my own spells for DCC and maybe they aren't all going to be the most original or best but it's still getting me to sit down and make something and learn things along the way.

Honey Cage is mostly a crowd control/de-buff spell but there is no reason the players couldn't use it to preserve foods or as a source of nutrition. 

 

Honey Cage 

Spell: Horn of Enigmatic Acceleration

     This spell was inspired by Nick Baran over at Breaker Press Games. He did a video a while back where he randomly generated a spell name using the charts in Knave 2e. I really liked this and took it as a challenge to myself, who struggles to write spells. 

    This originally started as a lesser and confusing haste but after looking through other spells and remembering that spells like Ekim's mask and force manipulation exist I decided this spell didn't need a strict linear progression like most others, that sometimes it's okay to make a spell have different effects at different levels because magic is unpredictable in DCC. So here it is:
 

Horn of Enigmatic Acceleration 

Spell: Animate Lump

Art by Lex Cazimi

     Recently I have found myself feeling the need to try my hand at writing spells, something that I find a little intimidating because it can get rather long and coming up with an escalation at each jump always feels a little overwhelming to me. Recently Nick, from Breaker Press Games made a video where he made a spell for DCC using Knave 2E's system of naming a spell and then worked from there. This video really got me in the mood to give making spells a shot. Doing what he did in that video is definitely in the cards for us but today we have a spell that I've been thinking about for a while.

    So this is how we get Animate Lump, the 1st level wizard spell. This was made after I read over the spell Breathe Life in the core rulebook. I like the idea of a wizard animating things. What I didn't care for with that spell was that it was both not swingy enough and didn't offer enough control. That seems like it might contradictory and it is! What I mean is that when this spell is cast, the most pathetic of your options are temporary. As it is written, this is fine, because the spell doesn't have a cost component unless you get to the really high end. On it's higher end this spell allows the creation of golems and other animated guardians at a steep price with a great amount of control over what comes out the other side. 

I think there is room for two options to expand the ability to create constructs.

The first is linked below, Animate Lump. This allows a wizard to create a permanent servant that, for the most part, isn't better than having a hireling but does allow a creative mage with gold to burn to create a useful and potentially interesting tool for dungeon exploration or small conveniences such as a torch bearer that can and will advance down a trapped hallway without a second though. The trade off is that it's costly. the circle costs 100gp in materials, the golem costs another 50gp. It takes one day and one point of spell burn. this is a steep cost at lower levels and allows the wizard to experiment during down time at higher levels when money is a little more available. 

 The second... I think the creation of golems under Breathe Life offers too much control. Magic is supposed to be unpredictable and dangerous. I think that the creation of a golem should work similar to sword magic. There should be dice rolls, there should be powers that you never expected to be added to the golem. There should be strange things that you couldn't foresee that are a part of the golem's creation. I think, when I am more familiar with writing spells, I'll write myself a higher level spell that emulates the nature of sword magic in the creation of a golem or animated construct. 

 

Here is Animate Lump, I hope you get some mileage out of it!
Animate Lump

Distracting Undulation: Level 1 Canticle of Bottle

 In the Last campaign the party created a god by accident. They poured an ooze on a divine relic hoping to destroy it and keep it out of the hands of pirates worse than themselves. The result was the ooze gaining sentience, like any gemheart ooze in Hodas, and due to the nature of the gem inside it becoming a new god. As my players and I work together to create a full write-up for it to reflect the write-ups in DCC RPG Annual we’re coming up with his canticles and i thought it might be fun to share them here! Here is Bottle’s level 1 canticle, Distracting Undulation!

 

Distracting Undulation: Level 1 Canticle of Bottle